Not a Night for Sleeping
by Da Gezi
Summary: The last thing they ever expected just walked in the door...and it's hungry... *Note: The creatures in this story are based off of those in the film 28 Days later. Other than that, there is no connection*
1. Chapter 1

Not a Night for Sleeping

Chapter 1

Jonathan Frost fumbled through the heavy blankets in the buzz of a mild drunk until he managed to turn over onto his right side. The wooden paneled walls felt good against his back, a stark contrast to the warm body lying next to his. She was sleeping now; he could hear the air slipping between her lips as she steadily breathed in and out. He'd never had any trouble sleeping before, especially after he'd been drinking—but there was something different about tonight. Maybe it was the long trip to China looming over his head, or maybe the recent fight he'd had with a drunk kid in Mount Liberty, but in any case, tonight was not a night for sleeping.

Snowflakes drifted slowly by the window. He could barely seem them slide past the narrow spots between the blinds. Behind them a full moon floated just above Ceslap Hall in the distance, by far the tallest building on campus. The moonlight tainted the snowflakes, turning them a vile, sulphurous yellow.

He listened to the monotonous humming of the fan over his head. The clinking sound it made as the chain rattled up against the light bulb was settling. The heavy thudding of bass speakers and the yells and singing of a Friday night from the bar downstairs had trailed off half an hour or so ago, leaving the whirring of the fan alone to occupy the night silence.

Jonathan slid his hand back under the blankets, relishing the feel of her warm skin as he squeezed her closer to him. She sighed briefly and then resumed the rhythmic breathing that almost seemed to beat in time with the fan chain. He never wanted to leave. Not in a million years.

The outer door of the apartment whined open and tapped against the countertop, then much more quickly slammed shut. Jonathan heard hands fumble for the lock on the door as his head fell back against the pillow. They all must have gone to Trevor's after the bar closed, Jonathan thought to himself. Something bumped heavily into the wall that the two apartments shared and the mirror on Jonathan's wall fell to the ground and shattered. Shit, he thought, now I'm going to have to buy another one of those things. Forget it, I'll deal with it in the morning. Amanda groaned and rolled over. So that's what it takes to wake her up! Jonathan thought to himself. She'd been drunker than Trevor that night and he'd even had to carry her home. "She'll regret it when she wakes up in the morning," he whispered out loud, "and remembers how many people saw her strip dance on the bar…if she remembers, that is." He snickered to himself as the rustling in the next room seemed to pause.

He wasn't quite sure what it was, but the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as a shiver rippled down his spine. He could faintly make out the sound of muffled breathing through the wall.

"Amanda," Jonathan said quietly as he whisked her jet black hair behind her ear, "do you hear that?" She shrugged and rolled onto her stomach. He propped himself up on one elbow in order to listen more carefully. The springs under the mattress squealed as if in pain as he readjusted himself.

Jonathan had never pretended to meddle in his roommate's affairs, yet something seemed…different. Geremiha had come home this late before, but not often, and had never made this much of a ruckus. Something crashed over in the next room.

He glanced over to the clock then positioned himself so as to not to disturb Amanda while sliding over her and lowering himself down onto the cold floor. 1:00. He shot an eye to the window once more, tracing the frost around the window sill then sighed to himself and slowly opened his bedroom door. The common room was still dark; even the welcome light in the kitchen was out. The bathroom light was flickering on and off periodically, lighting up the common room like a storm would. Jesus, he thought, Geremiha must've been drunker than he thought.

The muffled breathing in the next room had faded off, but something still didn't seem right. Neither one of the roommates had ever gotten drunk enough that the other one had to take care of them, and he hoped tonight wouldn't be the first time. Jon glanced into his roommate's dark room as he passed by the door on the way to the bathroom. Sometimes he hated how his roommate had put up black curtains over his widows. There was something about the beautiful silence of a night like this that just begged to be enjoyed.

Something sharp pricked his foot as he stepped onto the linoleum floor of the bathroom and he leapt back, steadying himself against a wall with one arm while trying to see what it was that had poked him. One of the bulbs in the bathroom was broken. Shards of broken glass littered the toilet seat and the floor of the room. The medicine cabinet hung open, band-aids, medicine bottles and razors strewn across the sink. He might've been worried if this hadn't been the norm. Wasn't it at the last party they'd thrown that they broke yet another ceiling panel as they were playing baseball with empty beer cans and a golf club? As his eyes traced the drunken devastation his roommate had caused, they fell on a dark liquid on the floor and long white gauze that ran all the way from the bottom of the sink out the door and off towards Geremiha's room.

All of a sudden the light bulb in the bathroom flickered out and didn't come back on. Jonathan took a deep breath in and held it, listening for something. The silence was deafening in the common room; even the faint clicking noise his fan sounded like it was amplified.

"Geremiha?"

He gingerly put his injured foot back down, careful not to step on anything else, and started to make his way back to his room. This was not the sort of night for this kind of creepiness. No, there was _never_ a time for this kind of creepiness. He stared intently into Geremiha's room as he walked by, looking for any trace of movement. Something rustled in the inky black of Geremiha's room and two small balls of light glimmered back at him. They narrowed and wobbled from side to side, tracing little patterns in the air. Were they getting closer? No, he was just drunk, he told himself as his heart began to speed.

Jonathan was almost at his door—he reached out with one hand and once, twice, three times gripped handfuls of air before finally landing on the doorknob. Now he was sure, they _were_ getting closer, and they were following him as he rounded the corner. He pushed open the door slowly, praying it wouldn't creek like the front door always did. The circles were getting closer and closer. He could see them clearly now, little balls of red light with smaller concentric black circles. They were hypnotizing and terrifying, yet at the same time beautiful. Swirls of yellow and orange churned around the small black circles like a river of lava. But the darkness in the center made even the gloom of Geremiha's room seem as bright as day. They were bleak and threatening—no, they were evil.

It was the heavy breathing that broke his concentration. He hadn't noticed it starting again, but now it was definitely present. A sour odor rolled out of Geremiha's room and puffed up Jonathan's nostrils. The doorknob slid around in his hand; a soft sweat now covered his whole body, and he shivered once more. Quietly he slipped into his room just as the red balls of light were about to enter the main room and shut the door as quietly as he could. It was already locked, but he fingered the handle just to make sure.

"Amanda," he whispered as he tip-toed to the edge of the bed, "Amanda, wake up…something's wrong." He shook her lightly, and then once again more vigorously when she didn't respond. She moaned and turned over, but he ripped the blankets off her, exposing her to the cold air—the only proven way to get her out of bed.

Something thudded on the door, like a dead weight falling to the ground. Jonathan's mind flitted back and forth almost as fast as his heart beat in his chest.

"What's wrong?" Amanda groggily asked, curling up into a ball and reaching down around her feet for the blanket that now lay on the floor.

Jonathan snuck quietly to his closet as another weight landed on the door, more heavy and more determined this time.

"Something's not right…get dressed…"

"What do you mean? It's only 1:30!" She struggled to see through squinted eyes, "Come back to bed, baby."

1:30, Jonathan suddenly realized—the bar didn't close until 2:00 on weekends. How was it already so quiet?

Jonathan rustled through his closet until his hand found what he was looking for. Now it was a steady pounding on the door, like something was trying to get through. Geremiha had never been the kind of person to play jokes like this.

"What the hell _is_ that?" Amanda asked as she sat up with a start, finally starting to realize the oddity of the situation. She hopped off the bed and began dressing as the pounding on the door grew louder and louder.

"Should we call the cops?" Amanda asked, "Jon, answer me! You're scaring me!"

The pounding suddenly stopped as soon as Amanda finished her question. Jonathan looked down through the mess of his floor and hastily put on a pair of pants and t-shirt.

"I think he heard that…maybe he'll go away if we're serious about calling the police," Amanda continued, "Jesus! What're you doing with that!?" She yelled as she saw the knife that Jonathan had clenched in his hand.

"Shut up!" Jonathan sharply snapped.

Boom.

The door gave way a little.

Boom.

The screws holding the top hinge in place went zipping by Amanda's head.

Boom.

The locking mechanism gave way and the door flew open. The wide shoulders of a mid-sized man filled the doorway. He stood a head taller than Geremiha, but still a good few inches shorter than Jonathan. The bathroom light had flickered back on, illuminating the silhouette as it stood in the door. He was hunched over, one foot forward and one foot behind as he clumsily held himself up. His arms hung forward, like an ape, but there was a tension throughout his whole body. Jonathan took a step back and accidentally kicked over a small tin of popcorn. As if reacting to the noise, the man in the doorway looked up, and two bright red eyes glared back at them.

"Get out of here, you drunk!" Amanda yelled at the top of her lungs.

The man's head snapped towards her as he seemed to be considering something. His lips drew back, revealing darkened teeth, the color of someone who'd been dipping tobacco for their entire life. It was a sinister smile, like a rabid dog barring his teeth. Without warning he leapt towards Amanda, but misjudged his jump, slamming into the metal frame that stuck out from beneath the mattress. He rolled across the floor and bowled the two of them over. A hand clawed through the air and raked across Amanda's chest. Jonathan scrambled to his feet as the body lay there sprawled across the floor motionless. Blood trickled from a cut on the man's forehead and his eyes rolled back into his head.

"Is he…dead….?" Amanda asked.

"No…I don't think so…just unconscious…" Jon replied as he finished pulling on his shoes and grabbed his keys, "But I don't want to stick around here to find out."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jonathan gripped the knife tightly in his hand as he walked out of his room and toward the apartment door, all the while listening intently for any movement in his or his roommate's rooms. Outside tires squealed and a car raced by. He could hear sirens in the distance. Damn, Jonathan thought, had he missed a call? No, now was no time to be thinking about that. They needed to find the police.

"My pager!" Jonathan whispered to Amanda.

"No, don't go back in there…you don't need it…let's just get out of here…"

But he had already started back toward his room before she began talking. He set his feet down as softly as he could with the bulky combat boots he had grown used to wearing during the long Ohio winters. He snatched his pager out of its charger just as he heard Amanda scream from the next room. He heard glass shatter and Amanda came running back into the bedroom.

"There's someone else trying to get in here!" She screamed.

The body on the floor in Jonathan's room began to jump and writhe, as if it was seizing. The man began to hiss and bubbling, bright red blood spurted out of its mouth, splattering across the wall and floor. Amanda screamed again as they raced out into the main room. There were three arms stretched through the small diamond-shaped window in the middle of the door. They flailed around, grasping, reaching for something, the garments covering them torn and bloody from the glass that had been in the window.

"Out Jeremiah's window!" Jon said as he pushed Amanda into his roommate's darkened room without thinking. He flicked on the lights and threw his roommate's door shut just as the front door flew open and he heard people rushing across the dark common room, tripping over chairs and tables, toppling to the ground like a wave crashing across a rocky shoal. He locked the door and tossed Jeremiah's computer chair out of the way as he ripped down the blanket covering the window and smashed it out with his boot. The people outside were pounding on the door now, not strong, determined thudding like when the man had tried to get into his room, but like rain pattering on the cement. It was disorganized, frantic even.

"Get outside, quick!" Jonathan yelled as the door started to splinter.

Amanda crawled out the small window and onto the overhanging roof of the bar below. The door flew off its hinges this time, hitting Jonathan squarely in the back just as he had climbed onto the desk to get out the window. He gasped for breath as the people raced into the room and pushed on the door, which now had him pressed up against the top pane of the window. He could feel the cold on his knees, which dangled outside in the cold, Amanda pulling on his legs. He pushed back against the door with all his strength, it budged a few inches and he slipped under the window pane and out the window. He looked back just in time to see what had happened—the door had split in two, the top half wedging him in between the window and itself with the weight of the people pushing against it, and the bottom half flying somewhere out of sight.

Jonathan got to his feet and pulled Amanda up. The half of the door still obscured the inside of the apartment from view. It thudded around and slid back and forth as people behind it pushed it every which way.

"We have to go," Jonathan said, his voice crackling with fear.

"Where?" Amanda asked, her voice every bit as fear-stricken as his.

Before he could answer he had scuttled across the roof and was lowering himself down to the ground. The streetlights seemed darker than usual—like there was a dark film over them, extinguishing—sucking up all their light. He reached up and helped Amanda down from the roof. A shadow of someone sprinting into the distance flickered across the building of the bar.

"Do you hear that?" Amanda cried.

Jonathan hadn't noticed it until now…screams…it sounded like hundreds of screams, all over campus.

"Let's get to the station," Jonathan replied, trying to brush off the horrible sound.

They darted through a dark alley and had to jump a fence, but it only took a minute for them to reach the back of the fire department where Jonathan volunteered. He slid his key across the keypad and it beeped as he opened the door. Amanda stepped in the building like there was something waiting to nip at her feet. Jonathan took one more glance behind them to see if they'd been followed, then shut the heavy metal door behind him. He pushed on it one more time to make sure it has fully shut before turning to survey the vehicle bays.

It smelled like diesel fumes. The Ambulance and two of the fire engines were gone. Well that explains the sirens, he thought to himself.

"What do we do now? What's happening? " Amanda said as she slumped against the wall of the station and forced back tears.

"I don't know…I wish I did…" Jon replied as he switched on his pager and turned it to the police frequency. He began to sit down next to her—he wanted to comfort her, to put his arm around her shoulders and tell her that everything was going to be alright—but he couldn't do that. The police band was full of traffic, none of it comprehensible. People were screaming, yelling for backup. There were gunshots and sirens. Suddenly the lights went off in the bay and they were once again immersed in darkness.

"Shit!" Jonathan cursed, running to the front of the station and looking out the small circular windows in the bay doors, "It's not just in here, look, the streetlights are out." He reached down just to check that his keys were still in his pockets—just a reflex he'd grown to have—and realized that he'd coincidentally put on his duty pants. He patted down the cargo pockets just to be sure, and allowed himself a satisfied half-grin.

"Jon…I want to get out of here…" The two of them stood apart in the silence, each waiting for the other to say something.

"I'm not sure what's going on right now, but I think this is the safest place I know of on campus besides the security office. "

"You're right," Amanda acknowledged, rising to her feet and walking over to glance out the windows, "I'm just worried there might be someone…else in here…"

"I doubt it. After all, No one's going to get in here without one of these keys," Jon confidently responded as he twirled his key ring around his finger.

"So what do we do? We can't just wait around here forever!" Amanda insisted.

"I think we should at least stick around here until we find out what's going on," Jonathan said, pulling the pager up to his ear to listen to the police bandwidth again, "Whatever it is, it's sure making hell for the police."

"Well…let's think this through," Amanda started, "Logic never hurt anyone, right?" The two of them laughed dryly, trying to drive the horrible scene that occurred in the apartment from their minds.

"Revolution?"

"No way," Amanda responded, "Not in the US. That only happens in China, and Russia and…wherever else…"

Jonathan fingered through the things in his pockets as he tried in vain to come up with some other explanation, "Maybe it's a cult or something…you know, like Virginia Tech, but worse."

"I don't care _what_ it is," Amanda asserted," we need to find some weapons or something. That little pocket knife of yours isn't worth anything. So what's lying around here?"

Jonathan smirked as he flicked on a small flashlight he'd pulled out of his pocket and ran around to the back of the last fire engine still parked in the station. He opened the diamond plate door on the back of the truck and handed a fiberglass, pick-headed axe to Amanda as he pulled another one out for himself. He reached up onto the top of the truck and slid out a long, pike pole before stepping back down onto the ground.

"What about the lights? Don't you guys have a generator or something?" Amanda questioned critically, "I don't like not being able to see around here…you never know what's hanging around in dark corners."

"Yeah, give me a sec," he said as he again ran to the back of the station. He quietly thanked himself for having spent so much time in the fire house for over the years. He could navigate that building with his eyes closed…and had had to. He threw open the door as he reached the generator and fumbled with the switches.

His pager blipped and vibrated violently against his hip just as he flipped the generator's on-switch. The familiar voice of the dispatcher came over the intercom as he struggled to hear over the loud humming of the generator. The overhead lights flickered once and then came on as he stumbled back to the front of the station where the speaker was.

"..._in your homes. Do not turn on any lights. Wait until the police have cleared your area. Do not make any contact with those exhibiting signs…" _Jonathan's eyes shot open and he lost all concentration on the message the dispatcher was so calmly relaying over the radio. Lights.

"Jon…there are more people coming outside…" Amanda murmured quietly as she peered out the windows of the bay doors.

"Shit!" Jonathan yelled as he sprinted for the generator. No, he thought, it was too late for that now, "Come here! Fast!"

Something heavy slammed against the bay doors. Then again. And again. Dark shapes weaved back and forth in front of the round windows. The doors groaned under the pressure from outside.

"Get in!" Jonathan yelled as he jumped into the driver's seat of the grass truck, a 4 wheel drive red pickup that'd had seen about as many years of life as he had. He flicked on the lights and buckled his seatbelt as Amanda climbed into the large truck. The steering wheel felt familiar in his hands, and he went through the list that he had learned to always check before he went anywhere: seatbelt, lift the plow, headlights, radio on. And the last one, open the bay door.


End file.
